Month: January 2020

Expectation, Denial and Projection

/ wpsutka / Leave a comment

Good Morning!

It’s been an interesting week of awareness, particularly in the areas of expectation, denial and projection. I don’t know about you but just saying those words I sense a weight or a heavy feeling in or around my body. You may feel it the same or you may not and both are ok. I have been looking at living my life with less resistance and reaction and although I am far from perfect I have been able to detach enough a good deal of the time to be more of an observer of the human experience. I was able to see someone spinning out and offer a hand, but also have the awareness that they were not willing to take it and I didn’t take it on as my own issue.

However, it wasn’t that long ago that I refused to see anything. I was deep in the blame game and I was in huge denial about where I was inviting the very things into my life that brought up all of the unresolved feelings of worthiness, shame, regret and guilt.  I had huge expectations of myself and everyone I had a relationship with and I judged them all for not meeting my expectations. I projected my feelings of worthlessness and I denied that I had any control over changing where I was in my life, but man I put on a great act of having my shit together.

The biggest and perhaps the most damaging expectations I had were of myself. I decided very young that I was going to be the goto person, the handler if you will. Yup, I was going to help anyone and everyone who needed it. I could sense that people were hurting and I was going to “fix them” and when I couldn’t I decided I wasn’t good enough. By the time I was 17 I was married and pregnant with my first child. My first marriage didn’t last long, 10 months in total. He was a very tortured soul and I loved him dearly, but after a string of incidents ending with him burning out our apartment after passing out high, I made the tough decision to end the marriage. The crazy part was I had expected that a person with substance abuse would love me enough to choose us over the booze and drugs. I was able to live up to the expectations put on me so why couldn’t he? Oh, man was I in denial.

He taught me a big lesson in projection and I was the unwilling receiver. He put the whole marriage failure on me and somehow I knew to just let it go, for the most part. I say that because even that gets heavy. I did, however, speak up and defend myself to a few people, the ones who didn’t know me. Duh

My second and current marriage has been chocked full of lessons. We have laughed, loved, cried and hated each other. We have been each other’s best friend and worst enemy at times. We have cycled through expectation, denial and projection dozens of times over the years and it has been hard for me. I once again hoped that if I loved him enough, if I was good enough he could change himself just as I had. Then, one day I had the awareness that he didn’t want to change, shit I was furious. I went into all of the stuff, you know, he was wrong and he doesn’t care and he, he, he, he… I did that for years! To be honest, I still catch myself, and that is the difference. I am now aware that he is what he knows and that is what he is doing or being. I am me, and I get to choose how I perceive him and how I respond, rather than reacting to what is going on with him. I don’t pretend to know what he is doing. I am trying to change my expectations into asks, my denial into awareness and compassion and to ditch the projections all together.

I am blessed that I have had this time with him to experience all of the stuff I chose to experience. What lessons will come in the future, who knows, but I will continue to share as I go along this wonderful, magical creation I call my life.

Ease, Awareness and Prosperity,

Wanda

 

 

 

Review and Planning in the Garden 2020

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And so it begins…

The seed catalogues are arriving, and my excitement and anticipation are growing. I want to buy all the things, the flowers, the veggies and even the fruit! I must pull myself back, hold and evaluate what grew well and what didn’t and why.

Let’s start with the wins. The tomatoes, kale, carrots, sunchokes and peppers were the bombs! Why were these so good? I chose the right spot and amended the soil with compost and manure, added minerals and covered with chopped straw to hold the moisture.

The peas, cauliflower, beets, cabbage and beans, not so much. I did get a yield, it was small, and they weren’t as large as I had hoped. These were not as plentiful or as large because I did not do the things mentioned above. I thought the soil was still good enough from the last years’ amendments, so I got lazy and just planted. I also had a couple of weeks where I was just completely overwhelmed when my mother passed away, and I just didn’t water the beds as much as I should have. I didn’t cover the beds with chopped straw either to hold the moisture, lesson learned.

One thing I did choose to do that blessed me every day was I decided to plant flowerbeds in the vegetable garden. This one choice made my days a little brighter and allowed me to smile because I was able to stop and watch the bees we house on the property, buzzing from flower to flower.

I have been watching YouTube and reading to learn what I can change to do better this year on those crops. I have learned a few things that I will use to tweak how I grow this year. I initially thought that I would just give up on growing those things, but I have since changed my mind and will instead relocate them and set up a gravity-fed watering system. We are also increasing our composting this year, we just have not taken it seriously enough and always come up short of what we need, not this year!

So what are we going to grow this year? Well, I figure we will continue with beans, carrots, tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot), peas, lettuce, zucchini, spinach, onions, cabbage, and cucumber. We will be adding potatoes, squash, pumpkin, swiss chard, broccoli and grains (wheat and oats). In the orchard, we will be adding more herbs, flowers and comfrey to bring in more beneficial insects.

We will be fencing our chickens for the first time ever to tear up some sod to create a rotating pastured pen for them. We used to free-range them, but it isn’t working in our best interest, more on that later.

I will be starting an organic spray cycle to the orchard to deal with many of the ongoing issues that have severely impacted our fruit yields. Again, I had been overwhelmed because of not planning to be very successful in the orchard. We are looking forward to an abundant crop of apples, Asian pears, plums, pears, cherries as well as berries this year.

I look forward to sharing the varieties that I decide to grow and the plan once it is done! My question to you is, what if anything has this inspired you to grow?

Ease, Joy and Prosperity,

Wanda